


Hawkeye retires

by natigail



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, Family, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Post-Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie), Team as Family, i just really love the idea of clint coming home to his family after the events of Age of Ultron
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-17
Updated: 2017-04-17
Packaged: 2018-10-20 01:38:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,850
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10652283
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/natigail/pseuds/natigail
Summary: Pietro sacrificed his life for Clint and a little boy's survival. His sacrifice makes sure that Clint can come home to his family but the death of the smart-mouthed speedster weighs heavier than he'd like to admit.





	Hawkeye retires

He needs to be done with this life.

His children are still young and he can’t keep up with this way of life. From the circus to assassin to S.H.I.E.L.D. agent to Avenger, there has to be a time to retire. After the mind control thing, he’s been wearier about how dangerous this lifestyle was for him and everyone he cares about.

The only trouble is that he doesn’t quite believe that he’ll be able to do that. He knows what he’d do for those people: Natasha, Tony, Thor, Steve, Bruce and now Wanda. He was never much of a team player originally but he became it with them. It had been a pleasure to serve beside them.

He knows that when another catastrophe hits, he’ll have to come running back to them. It will be a _when_ and not an _if_ no matter how much he wishes it would be. The world has changed over the last ten years. Alien invasions, Gods and people with superhuman abilities are not outlandish stories anymore. He’s just a guy with a bow and an arrow.

“Say hi to Laura? And tell the kids that their auntie loves them,” Natasha says walking up behind him in her elegant gaunt. She moves so light, almost impossible to hear, unless you know what you’re listening for. They’ve been partners for years and Clint would know the almost non-existent fall of her feet anywhere.

He turns back to look at his partner one final time. She’s staying here with Steve and he knows that they’ll do well with the new recruits. Her gaze is usually cold and calculating but it has a tendency to melt away around the right people. Clint earned that privilege years ago but now her fellow teammates receive it too.

“Of course,” he says, his voice unintentionally pitching lower as he tries to keep the emotion out of it. He’s kept his family secret from the whole team for so long and it still feels weird for Natasha openly to talk about them. He knows that has changed now.

He brought them all home to meet the family. It could have gone a lot worse but there had still been so much tension. He had liked that his wife and kids family were separate from his Avengers family. It had felt safer, like he was guarding Laura and their children away from everything that could hurt them.

“Come here, you big softie,” Natasha adds in a slower, gentle voice. She is a vicious woman most of the time but she has her moments. He’s retiring. They both know that if he is needed, he will come back but there’s still some finality about this whole thing.

She was the one who brought him back from Loki’s mind control. Without her help, who knows what he’d have ended up doing. He’d done plenty of horrible things but she’d stopped him before he went too far.

She was the first one who cared about him like that. It was only because of her that he even got to have somewhat of a normal life. It’s because of her that he got to meet Laura and build a family with her.

He lets her pull him into a hug and bite down on the sarcastic comment for once. Comfort used to terrify him because he’d never known it when he was younger. Life had been simpler when he’d been cold-hearted but it had also been a lot emptier.

Natasha, Laura, the kids and the Avengers and everyone on their team are all people that he cares about.

“I’m married, you know,” he retorts eventually when the hug bears on longer than it usually would. With lightening fast reflexes, she’s smacked him over his head.

“Ouch,” he mutters and moves back to see Natasha stare sternly but there’s still that fondness in her eyes. She trusts him. She even loves him in her own way. He knows loving doesn’t come easy to her, maybe even harder than it comes to him. He didn’t miss the chemistry between her and Bruce while they stayed over at the house. Now the green guy is missing.

“If you need me, you know how to reach me,” he tells her and sends her a glance that will tell her all that she needs to know. She’s a master at decoding stares. He’ll be here for her if she needs him. He’ll be here to fight for the team if need be.

“Be on your way, Barton,” Natasha says and shoos him off with her hands. “We wouldn’t want people to know the famous sharpshooter is so sentimental.”

“You mean you don’t want people to notice the Black Widow acting soft,” he counters. “Bye, Natasha.”

He doesn’t need to tell her that they’ll see each other again. He knows that they will. Their history is so complicated and their ties run so deep.

Arriving home is accompanied by mixed feelings. Clint is always elated to see Laura, Cooper and Lila but the uncertainly of what his life will be in the foreseeable future scares him. He’s not a man to really admit when something scares him but it doesn’t mean that he doesn’t feel it.

He was terrified when Laura got pregnant with their first child. It had been what they had wanted. He’d always wanted a family, even if he hadn’t dared to say that out loud as it seemed too far-fetched for someone like him to have something so wonderful in his life. Then Laura had come into his life and everything had just felt so easy and right with her.

However, the actual realization that he’d be bringing a child into the world, this twisted and evil world, had hit him harder than he thought it would. He’d been terrified when the baby came and didn’t leave Laura’s side for weeks.

She was the one who’d made him go back to work. S.H.I.E.L.D. probably wouldn’t have tolerated many more vacation days either. Laura has never tried to stop him or forbid him from being who he is and he loves her so much for that.

Pulling her into his arms as he walks into their home, that constant calm and reassurance washes over him all over again. He is home. He is safe and they are all safe. For a moment, watching Pietro tumble down after saving his life isn’t at the forefront of his mind. Copper and Lila aren’t far behind their mother and soon he is smothered with love from his family.

The kids want to know about what they heard on the TV. They’re so excited about the flying city and how their father is a hero. He’d debated hiding it from them at first but he realizes that it would be pointless. He committed to a very public life when he joined the Avengers and they would have found out eventually. The key part was making sure no one found out that they were Hawkeye’s kids.

Laura wouldn’t have allowed their children to grow up with a lie either. She values honesty and she never lied to him. In the web of lies he’d been used to and comfortable living in for so long, she’d been a fresh breeze that finally allowed him to breathe.

Even his relationship with Natasha still entails some secrecy and he respects that because he knows the important stuff. However, knowing that Laura would always be blunt and forthright with him and that he could be the same with her is an indescribably feeling of relief.

Clint goes through three books before Lila and Cooper finally drift off to sleep. He can see how they were struggling to keep their eyes open and prolong the night-time reading for as long as possible. He indulges them because he seriously misses them whenever he has to be away, which has been most of the time.

He knows why they fight so much to stay awake and keep from closing their eyes. Too many times, he’ll have read their night-time story and by the time they open their eyes the following morning, he’d be back in the tower at work and heading out for his new mission.

It would all change now. He had retired as an Avenger. He wouldn’t be going on missions all the time, not anymore. He would be here to spend time with his family.

He plants light kisses on the top of their foreheads and wonder how he ever got so lucky that these two wonderful tiny humans had come partly from him. He has no illusion that they must be mostly Laura because they are just as amazing as their mother.

“They finally lost the fight to sleep?” Laura asks as he walks into the bedroom and finds her standing by the window glancing out. A déjà vu hits him right in the gut. Last time he saw her in that spot, she was glancing outside of the window and looking at Steve and Tony arguing.

He’d asked her if he thought that they didn’t need him. It had been a quiet insecurity of his that he mostly ignored. He had more confidence in himself than to let something like that hinder him but it did sometimes cross his mind. He was fighting alongside a God, the Hulk, a super soldier, a man in an iron suit and Natasha, who was the best in their former business.

 _“Actually, I think they do. They're gods, and they need someone to keep them down to Earth,”_ she had answered.

Her words are still in his head and his hand automatically goes to the spot on her stomach that the Avengers’ scientists managed to regenerate. Laura had told him that she was able to feel the difference between his real skin and the fake. He can’t feel it now but he knows that she had been able to.

She has always seen right through him. It is one of the many things that he loves about her. He never has to hide himself from her.

He can feel his guard dropping already. He put it up when he was around the Avengers and around his kids but it just falls away now. Pietro died. That annoying speedster died saving his life.

Clint doesn’t notice that Laura has moved and it’s only when strong and comforting arms wrap around him that he realizes. He wouldn’t put it past her to know about Quicksilver’s death. Natasha could very well have told her or Laura might just still be much more perceptive than most people when it comes to him. They see his cold, hard, focused glare but she sees the emotion beneath.

He has long ago giving up on grieving like a regular person. In the life he choses to lead, he can’t let himself fall apart. He has to stay strong for everyone. The only ones that might cause a break to that rule is Natasha, Laura and the kids but if he loses either of them, he isn’t sure how he’ll keep on breathing.

“You lost someone,” Laura says and she squeezes him tightly as she can slot all the broken pieces back into their damaged frame that she’s one of the two people that repaired in the first place.

Someone like him shouldn’t have been allowed to fall in love with someone like her. He knows that. He shouldn’t be granted her love but he’s so thankful that he has been and he will work every single moment to keep it. It’s a miracle that after the life he’s lead, he can come home to a family like this.

“Pietro Maximoff. Crazy kid. Fast. Annoying little shit. Selfless bastard.”

All his jokes about wanting to shoot the kid seem to burn through him now. It was a joke. They were kidding and yet the kid’s last words had been referring to the same thing.

 _“I bet you didn’t saw that coming,”_ he had said with eyes going more vacant by the moment. The humor washes from his face to give way to a flash of pain before he crumbled.

Clint has seen many people die and he wasn’t even that close to the kid but Pietro fought bravely for the team in the end. He was one of them. He died as one of them, no matter how they started out.

“He called me an old man often,” Clint mutters and sneaks his arms around Laura and buries his head in the crook of her neck.

It annoyed the hell out of him. He didn’t want to be called an old man. Old is a hazard in his line of business. But now the remark just emphasizes and reminds Clint just how young that boy was. He had led a life primarily dominated by hate and revenge. He never got to have a family.

And yet, he is the reason that Clint gets to come home to his. It hardly feels fair.

“Natasha told me what happened,” Laura says gently. He can hear the gratitude in her voice and he understand it.

Without Pietro’s sacrifice he wouldn’t be coming home to her, Lila and Cooper or their unborn boy. His right hand moves down to the swell of her belly. It’s not long now before he’ll be a father for the third time. Clint has learned that life isn’t fair a long time ago but this still feels like a sucker punch to the gut.

The loss of Coulson hurt like this too. Losing people comes with the territory of his work and he tries his best to be somewhat indifferent to make it easier. He’d rather sit up high in his “nest” and observe as the people move about. He’ll get to learn about them from a safe distance. He doesn’t have to get too close.

However, letting people close has also brought him the greatest joys of his life, so maybe he’s a hypocrite.

“I’ve retired,” Clint states, barely louder than a whisper but he notices the way that Laura’s heart momentarily seems to stop before she squeezes him tighter. He’s never tried to lie to her but he knows that she’d be able to tell if he did. He’s never tested his theory but he just knows.

Which means that she knows that he’s serious when he says it. However, she also knows him really well and the way she gently guide his head from her neck back so she can see his eyes, tells him that she already knows the underlying conditions too.

“I will love to have you home. The kids will be ecstatic. But Clint, I also know you… If they need you, you will come back to them. You need to remember that I understand this. I understood it when I married you.”

“Sometimes, I wonder how you to agreed to that,” he grumbles.

She reaches forward and cups his cheeks. He’d never let anyone else touch him like that but Laura can do anything to him.

“I did it because I love you. I know the man you were and I know the man you are now. I know how much you help those people. They might be almighty and have superpowers but your addition to the team is invaluable too. You and Natasha keep them humble. You keep them human, so they don’t forget the kind of people you protect. I will savor the time with you here but I will not hold you to that retirement story. I wouldn’t ask you to betray your nature.”

If anyone can take his breath away with a speech, it’s his wife. He doesn’t even have words to follow up that statement and just nods before he pulls her into a reassuring kiss. Pressing his lips to hers, they part and the familiarity and comfort and reassurance overwhelm his senses.

Later after Laura falls asleep, he just stares at her sleeping form. She thrashes around somewhat, annoyed by the size of her pregnant belly but she calms down when he begins stroking it. The baby presses a foot or a hand against her skin and he feels the contact hit his palm.

In the morning, he’ll ask Laura what she thinks of Pietro as a middle name for their unborn son. It’s a very small tribute to the man who ensured that he’d be around to see all three of his children grow up.

Maybe retiring from the Avengers is just a temporary dream but he’ll enjoy every damn second of it in the bosom of his family. He’s been through so much and life will never stop throwing punches at him but it also keeps on opening doors that he thought would always be locked from him.

Fighting for good.

Marrying and having children.

Being part of a team he trusts.

In this life, everything can change in an instant but he intends to make every single one of them count.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this little Avengers piece last week when I was feeling a bit stuck with my current and much longer stories. I only watched Age of Ultron a couple of months ago and one scene that stuck in my mind was the scene with Clint and Laura that I described in this little one shot. I feel like the reveal of his family just made me feel so warm and cosy because I so want that for Clint. I haven't written Avenger fics before, so bear with me.
> 
> Find more of my stories under my profile or at https://www.wattpad.com/SecretNRB & http://secretlywritingstories.tumblr.com
> 
> Thank you so much for reading. As always, feedback is highly appreciated. Come talk to me @natigail on Tumblr or use the comment section below.


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